ICE officers detained a 10-year-old girl who had just gone through an operation.
Rosamaria Hernandez, who has cerebral palsy, was brought illegally to the U.S. when she was just 3 months old. Now 10 years old, she was riding in an ambulance when federal immigration officers stopped the vehicle at a checkpoint. Then Border Patrol agents followed the ambulance to Driscoll Children’s Hospital in Corpus Christi.
Border Patrol agents took Hernandez into custody as soon as she was discharged, and she was taken to a juvenile shelter in San Antonio, 150 miles away from where her parents live.
Recovery from Hurricane Maria, which caused the largest power outage in U.S. history, is marked by contract controversy.
Most of Puerto Rico still lacks power more than a month after Hurricane Maria made landfall. According to BuzzFeed News, Maria caused the largest blackout in the country’s history.
But the company responsible for rebuilding the electrical grid, Whitefish Energy, is facing a good deal of criticism. Just yesterday, the official Whitefish Twitter account lashed out at San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz, who had attacked the company’s contract: “We’ve got 44 linemen rebuilding power lines in your city & 40 more men just arrived. Do you want us to send them back or keep working?”
The firm had only two employees before it scored the $300 million contract, which has been questioned ever since. The Washington Post reported on Monday that Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and the company’s CEO are acquaintances. Zinke and the CEO, Andy Techmanski, say the secretary didn’t help Whitefish score the contract.
Aside from that, The Daily Beast reported that Whitefish is financed by a private-equity firm with a founder who made significant donations to the President Donald Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee.
Your daily news detox is this lil kitten.
Contact Mollie Bryant at 405-990-0988 or bryant@bigiftrue.org. Follow Bryant on Twitter and Facebook.